Reason for GPS problems found!

Ken Restivo ken at restivo.org
Thu Jul 17 09:55:49 CEST 2008


On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 04:18:42PM +0200, Benedikt Schindler wrote:
> hi,
> 
> i think the openmoko team is doing a great job.
> and everyone was onto it, to have a fast and good solution.
> 
> so i think the real interesting question now is:
> 
> Had someone tested Andy's  "fix-force-sdcard-clk-off-when-idle" patch yet?
> Does it solve the problem?
> And how many mA does that patch save ;)
> 
> (I still couldn't test patches. my phone hopefully arrives on 27th)
> 
> so thanks for the work  Joerg, Andy and the hole rest of the OM team.
> and also thanks to the man who found out that it is a SD-Card problem.
> 
> (i still must have a fish somewhere, for all the guys who think that 
> this is so bad and that it's impossible that the OM team delivered such 
> a phone)
> 
> 

The kind of error that caused the GPS problem is very common in *every* new commercial product development. The severity varies, but I've been bitten by it many time.

I think the devs at OpenMoko handled this one very, very well. And, I think that most of the users handled it very, very well too. The heroes of this story are of course whomever at OpenMoko came up with and implemented the fix, but also the user in Germany who isolated the bug down to the SD card through careful testing. That is the kind of cooperation that shows the value of Free Software.

What was the time diff between the moment that the SD card was isolated as the source of the problem, and when a software fix was found, tested, and made available? Two days? One day? That's amazing. Hats off to everyone.

-ken




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